When I talk to business owners about marketing, I often find we have very different ideas about what it actually means. Most people immediately think of the visible stuff. Advertising, social media, websites, campaigns, branding and design. And while all of those things have their place, they’re really only part of the picture.
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What interests me far more is what’s happening behind the scenes. What’s the business challenge we’re actually trying to solve? Where is the real opportunity for growth? And are we making the right decisions before we start spending money?
After more than 30 years working in marketing, advertising and brand strategy, I’ve learnt that the greatest commercial results rarely come from simply doing more marketing. They come from understanding the business better, challenging assumptions and finding opportunities that may have been sitting there all along.
I like to call it marketing that means business.
A good marketing strategy starts with some fairly straightforward questions. Who are your most profitable customers? Why should they choose you over someone else? What’s stopping an interested prospect from becoming a paying customer? And where should you invest to achieve your business goals?
They’re simple questions, but you’d be surprised how many businesses struggle to answer them.
Let me share three very different businesses I’ve worked with, because I think they demonstrate just how much opportunity can be uncovered when you look beyond the marketing activity.
The first is Comdain Homes, a Melbourne luxury home builder that had experienced five consecutive years of declining sales. When I came into the business, the sales team was blaming marketing for poor-quality leads, while the marketing agency was blaming sales for not converting them.
Sound familiar?
The business was reporting around 20,000 website visits, but when I investigated, half of those visits were actually landing on an error page. They were also spending 50% of their marketing budget on print advertising, despite their strongest conversion opportunities coming from people visiting their display homes.
There was clearly more going on than a lack of advertising.
We looked at their competitors, their customer journey and, importantly, spoke with previous customers. What emerged was a consistent appreciation for Comdain’s craftsmanship, attention to detail and use of beautiful materials.
Here was a business building homes worth between $2 million and $5 million, yet its brand wasn’t communicating the premium experience customers were actually receiving.
That insight changed everything.
We repositioned the brand around craftsmanship and luxury, rebuilt the digital experience, targeted affluent Melbourne customers and connected marketing enquiries more effectively with the sales team through a CRM.
Rather than spreading the budget across everyone, we focused on the people most likely to become customers.
Within one year, Comdain had secured three years’ worth of signed building contracts, following a total marketing investment of $180,000. The owner subsequently sold the business for more than $35 million.
I remember being called back in after that first year, thinking perhaps I was about to receive a pat on the back. Instead, I was told to stop the advertising because they’d achieved so much!
For me, that story demonstrates why understanding the problem matters more than immediately increasing the marketing budget.
The second business, Silverback, presented a completely different challenge.
Silverback supplies transport and industrial products, with more than 2,000 items in its range. It wanted to grow its presence in the spill control market, an industry worth approximately $80 million annually.
Initially, the business was focused on selling individual spill control products. But when we investigated customer needs, competitor offerings and Silverback’s existing capabilities, something interesting became clear.
Customers didn’t necessarily want more products. They wanted help managing the entire problem.
And Silverback was already capable of providing that help. It simply wasn’t presenting its offer in a way that reflected the value it could deliver.
So we changed the conversation from selling consumables to providing a complete Spill Control System.
That included a complimentary site assessment, expert product recommendations, practical training and ongoing maintenance and servicing.
Suddenly, customers weren’t just buying something off a shelf. They were gaining a partner who could help them manage spill control properly.
We supported that positioning with educational content, targeted promotions and a clearer customer journey.
Within two years, Silverback had captured 2.5% of the market, exceeding its original growth target, with approximately $2.6 million in revenue against a $50,000 marketing investment.
What I particularly love about this example is that we didn’t need to invent a completely new business. The capabilities were already there. We simply connected them to what customers actually needed.
It raises an interesting question for any business owner. What are you leaving your customers to figure out for themselves, either before or after they buy from you?
Sometimes the biggest opportunity isn’t a new product. It’s a better way of packaging and communicating the value you already provide.
My third example is Leaptel, an Australian internet provider that started with two brothers, zero revenue and ambitions to compete nationally against some very established telecommunications brands.
They certainly didn’t have the advertising budgets of Telstra or other major providers, so trying to compete in the same way would have been a very expensive exercise.
Instead, we looked for an opportunity to be different.
Leaptel had a genuine local service advantage, with Australian-based support and a much more personal customer experience. We built a friendly, approachable brand around that difference, including a memorable little frog called Lenny.
Then we developed a highly targeted advertising strategy around the NBN rollout.
Rather than advertising everywhere, we followed availability suburb by suburb, creating campaigns specifically relevant to local communities. Once the approach worked in Melbourne, we could repeat and refine it in other cities.
We also recognised that attracting customers was only half the challenge. Keeping them mattered just as much.
By understanding when customers were most likely to consider switching providers, we introduced loyalty initiatives and referral programs to strengthen those relationships.
Over five years, Leaptel grew from zero to $13 million in revenue and expanded from two brothers to 45 staff.
Again, the success wasn’t about having the biggest budget. It was about knowing where to focus, creating a genuine reason for customers to choose the business and developing a repeatable approach that could grow with it.
Across these three businesses, the challenges were completely different. One needed to reverse declining sales, another needed to expand its offering, and the third needed to establish itself against much larger competitors.
But the underlying principle was exactly the same.
We started with research and diagnosis, developed a clear marketing roadmap, then implemented activity that directly supported the commercial goals of the business.
That’s an important distinction because I see too many businesses jumping straight into activity without doing the thinking first.
They decide they need more social media, a new website or another campaign. But unless we understand who we’re trying to reach, why they should choose us and what happens after they enquire, we may simply be spending more money promoting the wrong message.
Customer research is particularly valuable here. I’ve often found that business owners are genuinely surprised by what their customers say when someone independent asks them a few simple questions.
Sometimes it’s wonderful feedback about strengths the business has overlooked. Other times it’s an uncomfortable truth about something that’s making the customer experience difficult.
Both are incredibly useful.
And the same principles apply whether you’re a sole operator or running a $50 million business. Your budget, resources and marketing channels may change, but the need for clarity doesn’t.
Even with AI making marketing tasks faster and more accessible, experience and strategic thinking still matter. These tools can help us research, brainstorm and create, but they can’t replace the judgement needed to decide what’s right for the business.
Ultimately, I want business owners to stop thinking about marketing as a collection of activities and start seeing it as a commercial growth opportunity.
Before you invest in your next campaign, ask yourself whether you’re targeting the right customers, giving them a compelling reason to choose you and making it easy for them to take the next step.
You might discover that the growth you’re looking for is much closer than you think.
If this has prompted you to question something in your own business, I’d love to continue the conversation. I’ve put together a free guide, 20 Marketing Essentials for Business Growth, available at 20essentials.beammarketing.au, and I also offer a complimentary Growth Accelerator Assessment to help identify opportunities worth exploring.
Or, as I always say, let’s grab a coffee. Sometimes a fresh perspective and a good conversation are exactly where the next big opportunity begins.